[b SO NOW FOR THE PEEL TOO:..]“The answer is a lemon”[/b] is the (now somewhat antiquated) riposte to someone who asks a silly question.

But for the last 20 years cancer researchers have been asking the very serious question of “is there anything less toxic than chemotherapy ?”…..and making the utterly bizarre discovery that the answer could indeed be a lemon.

And not just a lemon, but also an orange, a grapefruit and a lime. All of these common citrus fruits have been found to harbour some very potent anti-cancer compounds – mainly in their peels.

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Medical research on citrus started in the classic way:

extracting the natural compounds and adding them to cancer cells in laboratory petri-dishes. Scientists were staggered to find that tiny amounts of these compounds are extraordinarily effective at zapping cancer cells – or in science-speak: “the data clearly support limonoid glucosides at micromolar concentrations as being lethal to cancer cells in culture”, reported scientists at the prestigious Texas A&M University 10 years ago.

Since then, a total of 57 glucosides (aka flavonoids) have been found in citrus fruit peels, but interestingly only some seem to work for specific cancer cells. For example, 8 of these are lethal to a type of “highly metastatic” breast cancer cells, but 11 different ones kill the more bog standard estrogen-positive breast cancer cells. To date, citrus flavonoids have also been found to zap the cells of other cancers such as colon, pancreas, lung and stomach.

But of course, however distasteful, the next necessary step has been to test them on animals. In one experiment, both grapefruit pulp and the flavonoid limonin prevented the growth of colon cancer, in another, two flavonoids present in grapefruit called naringin and naringenin “significantly reduced tumour burden” in mouth cancer, and in a third, artificially induced prostate cancer tumours were reduced in mice.

All in all, these citrus compounds have turned out to have extraordinary anti-cancer properties: they “inhibit angiogenesis” (thwart the way tumours grow) and “induce apoptosis” (kill cancer cells), making them in principle “chemotherapeutic agents”, according to a recent report.

Although human clinical trials appear to be some way off, one Japanese company is already marketing a “citrus peel extract” called Gold Lotion. However, the company seems to be slightly downplaying claims about cancer, promoting the product at as anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-oxidant and even as a hair restorer !

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Be that as it may. What’s so exciting about these discoveries is that cancer patients now appear to have the option of taking their treatment into their own hands. After all, what could be easier or more harmless than drinking a home-made concoction of lemon and orange peel, plus grapefruit and lime juice, and seeing what happens ? On present evidence, the concoction is likely to be at least as effective as conventional chemotherapy with its dismally mixed track record.

ps from the Site Administrator Judith: I put half a lemon or lime, peel and all, in my green juice made in a centrifugal juicer...makes a lovely taste and also good for us as this article tells us!